Old Loong

I decided to venture up to Bendigo (2 hours by train). It turned out to be another lovely day and the journey itself was well worth it. Bendigo is in the old goldfields area and has a lot of history attached to it.

Besides wandering around the town, I went to the Chinese Dragon Museum. The Chinese have been in Bendigo for around 150 years. Having come to work in the goldfields. The oldest Chinese restaurant in Oz is here. Every Easter, there is a parade which is always led by the Chinese dragon. Until the 70's (when he was officially retired), Loong was "the man". He was replaced by Sun Loong, who continues the tradition. Old loong is over 60 metres long (Sun Loong is over 100m). The museum houses all of the dragons that the town has (including night dragons, which are transparent and have lanterns put inside them) and many other Chinese relics. There is also a little Chinese garden and a temple to Guan Yin.

I also went up to the Central Deborah Gold Mine. Now it's a tourist/educational attraction that shows how gold was mined. I decided not to go down into the mine (mainly because a school party had just gone in and were testing out the echoes!

After a quick look around the centre of the town, again the architecture from the 1850s to 1900s caught my eye and a wander through the park and fernery to check out the tweeties, it was back to the train station and the trip (snooze) back to Melbourne.